


Tidally Locked

by umbrastaff



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fluff and Angst, a whole lot of time loops, will add characters and tags as i go!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-09-25 05:27:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9804506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umbrastaff/pseuds/umbrastaff
Summary: An AU where Lucas has the Temporal Chalice and Lucretia reflects on her life with him and Maureen before the bureau really got started.





	1. A Bubble To Burst

It had been a long time since Lucretia had allowed herself to cry. When asked she’d say she didn’t remember the last time, but she remembered. She remembered the last time she cried like it was yesterday and all the days before that, some days she can still feel the way her shoulders lurched and the pyre that was built at the base of her spine begins to burn anew. Every day since then has felt like a fresh batch of kindling thrown onto the fire, it didn’t get any easier to deal with but she had to accept it. Maureen was gone. Maureen who shone so brightly, Maureen who held her hand, Maureen who she built everything with, Maureen who she loved, was gone. Death by her own brilliance, of course, no other passing would’ve suited her. She was always working on something and it was always something to make the world better, happier and to that end Lucretia carried on. She had to. For her love, for the betterment of the world at large.

The world, however, didn’t want to make it easy for her. Lucas was still here and still in her care, the days they’d spent together in lightheartedness were long gone but she would never call him an obligation. Lucas, for better or worse, was still working. She’d known he had the same drive as his mother the moment they’d met - he was a child then but he had the same twinkle in his eye, the same almost rigid determination was in him even back then, it was obvious even when he was just doing something as simple as taking something apart just to put it back together.

After Maureen’s...passing it was hard to talk to him. She didn’t know what to say. She’d seen many brilliant lives flicker out before but none like Maureen’s. The aftermath was messy at best and catastrophic at worst. Long story short: everything fell apart. Lucas withdrew from her, bit back at every attempt she’d made to comfort him however minimal they might have been. She knows in her heart she should’ve tried harder with him, she should’ve put aside the mission for five minutes to talk to him but she didn’t. She buried herself in a pile of work that she was still struggling to get out of, three new reclaimers came on board and while they’d definitely made getting and destroying the relics easier that was all they could do. The damage was done. Phandalin was one thing, her shattered family was another.

Some nights she can still hear the last things they’d said to each other. Maureen’s rites of remembrance had been performed, her memory now forever locked in the minds of those out here and long forgotten down on the surface. Lucretia didn’t allow herself to cry as she stood tall in front of the bureau, staff in her hand keeping her steady as she spoke. She can’t remember what she told them anymore, many more friends had passed since then, but she remembers her voice wavering and betraying her towards the end. She remembers Lucas by her side, turning to leave before the ceremony was over.

“I know this is...difficult, but we need to remain strong.” She’d found him in her office, curled up on the chair _she_ used to sit on. “Now, more than ever, we need you to help us, Lucas. We must be strong.”

“‘We must be strong,’ do you hear yourself?” He’d hissed at her from across the desk, “everything she ever did she did for _you.”_

“Lucas I-” her vision began to cloud and she stops to compose herself, gripping the armrests of her chair. She could not afford to be weak. For his sake, as well as her own. “I know and I will never forget how hard she worked for us, but now we need to make sure that it wasn’t for naught.”

“My mother is dead.” His voice wavered, tears are streamed down his face and she could see an anger in his eyes that she’s never seen before. She wanted so badly to rush to his side, to do something- anything- to comfort him, but she couldn’t. All at once he’s the little boy she would read bedtime stories to, the boy she’d sing to, and in the same breath he’s a complete stranger. She had no idea what to do and he could tell. Without warning he sprang up from the chair, knocking it over, and slammed his hands on her desk. She hates it, but she flinched.“Nothing we do is going to bring her back. You can hide behind all this,” he gestures wildly to everything around them, “if you want, but I won’t.” There’s such venom in his voice that she can barely recognise it, it shudders and shakes and it threatens to turn into a shout with each passing word but never quite gets there.

She hates herself for it, but she looked away. Her eyes cast downward to her all but trembling hands and she says nothing. Not even a whisper. “You’re a coward and I- I hate you.”

When he leaves, she desperately wants to say something but the words just wouldn’t come. The door clicks shut behind him, he would’ve slammed it, she could tell he wanted to, but instead he looks back at her one more time. She couldn’t speak, all that comes out is a shaking sigh.

That was the last time the really spoke, passing words and documents hardly made up for the fracture that had begun to split them in two. If she could, she’d go back to that day and she’d force words from her throat no matter what they were - something had to be better than nothing. But she couldn’t go back, she had to keep going forward. There’s only up from here, she’d been told and told herself. There’s only up from here, she’d told herself when she was searching for relics on her own, when she’d foolishly wagered twenty years of her whole life and lost, when she’d found Maureen and her son, when the bureau was formed, when the base made its way into the night sky. Everything was going to work out. There was only up from there. Words were all she had, taking things into her own hands had left them as something she didn’t recognise for a time.

Things should’ve gotten better. There was a time when Lucretia thought perhaps Lucas would come back to her, that they would talk, that she could fix part of this. But Lucas never came to her. He send drones down with his reports and she sends hers back with them, sometimes she includes notes to him. Little things, she’ll ask how he’s doing, she never gets much of a response but she never really expected one despite what the hope constantly fluttering in her heart might tell her. She kept her stone of farspeech close at all times, just in case. But a call never came and the times she called him were uncomfortable and threw fuel onto her anxiety’s pyre more than it calmed it down. She was glad to know he was alive, that he was as safe as he could be in his lab, but she’d be lying if she said she was happy with how things turned out.

 

It was Candlenights when everything really went wrong, because of course it was. Things were going smoothly, the three new reclaimers were good at their job despite their...well, their everything else. If she was anyone else she might’ve grown weary of their dramatics, but honestly? She was thankful for the distraction and their friendship. They made her smile, despite everything, and she liked them.  
With them, the bureau had burst into life. She hadn’t foreseen herself attending a Candlenights party so soon after the bureau really got itself started, but here she was. Mingling amongst co-workers, she restrained herself from exchanging gifts but did give everyone their bonuses.

Then, of course, was the bubble.

“Uh, ma’am? You might wanna see this.”

It was Angus who saw it first, who else would it have been, and pulled her towards the large window facing out towards the earth. The bubble itself was everything you’d expect a bubble to be, except for the fact it was ever so slightly pink and large enough to encapsulate the entirety of Lucas’ lab. Her free hand made its way to the cold glass, Killian and Magnus soon joined her in looking out on the lab. This wasn’t how this was meant to go.

“Boys, my office in fifteen minutes.”

“You got it.”

 

“Lucas? Lucas, answer me, what’s going on?”

Her office was cold and felt all but empty as she rummaged through files upon files about enchantments, Lucas’ scientific notes and discoveries and- relics. Fuck. Shit. Goddamn it. What was the last relic she’d told him about? She flicked through and scanned letters and documents until she came across the last few notes they’d sent each other in- God, what had it been? Weeks? Dread set in and her hands shook as she read the final note.

The Temporal Chalice.

He’d found it. The fool had found it behind her back and taken it for himself and she’d been blind enough to believe he was safe here. It stung, like a pin slowly piercing her skin, and she all but slumped into her chair, a hand moving to cover her eyes. Were she more detached she’d be able to call this another Magic Brian and move on, that hatchet had already long since been buried. But it wasn’t and she wasn’t, this was Lucas.

“Lucas, please,” she held the stone in her hand as if it was something fragile, keeping her voice as smooth as she could, “please just- just answer me.”

He didn’t. She knew he wouldn’t but that wasn’t what was bothering her. The usual deafening silence that would ring out from the stone was slowly but surely being replaced by long, drawn out static. It wouldn’t skip a beat, silence, silence, static, silence. Never a word to hear within it, or at least not one she could catch. Silence, silence, static, silence. It was almost deafening for the seconds it was there. She barely had time to clean up the mess of paper and parchment strewn across her desk before the boys came in, casual as ever.

“So you want us to pop that bubble or what?” Taako saunters in first, umbra staff swinging in one hand while he twirls his hair in the other.

“I’m afraid it might be a bit more complicated than that.”

“When isn’t it?” Merle barks out a laugh, leaning on Magnus’ leg.

“For real though, what are we gonna do about that? It’s kind of tacky.”

“It’s pretty tacky.”

“Super tacky.”

“The tackiest.”

“Boys, please.” She laughs despite herself.

“What? All I’m saying is that shade of pink really clashes with the colour of the lab.”

“Should’ve gone with more of a mauve, right?”

“Duh, Merle.”

“We can discuss our scientific advisor’s poor choice in colour schemes later,” she straightens up in her chair, propping herself up on her desk with her elbows, “for now I have a mission to prep you for.”

“So there’s a relic involved?” Magnus leans forward, eyebrows perking up curiously.

“Unfortunately that seems to be the case, yes.”

“A relic that makes bubbles. How horrifying.” Taako scoffs, flipping the umbrella up to rest on his shoulder. “What’s it called, the Bubble Wand of Doom?”

“If that’s all it was trust me we wouldn’t be here,” she sighs but can’t help the chuckle that rises out of her throat. “I won’t lie to you boys, this is a rough one.”

“Oh, good,” Taako rolls his eyes as if the other missions they’ve been on haven’t been rough, “you know us, we live for that shit.”

“I’ve noticed,” she brushes her hair out of her face, “the relic in question is the Temporal Chalice, it’s one of the most potent and powerful relics we’ve come across.” She’s stern and she can see them straighten up ever so slightly. “I can’t possibly begin to guess what this thing might use to tempt you, but you must-” she makes sure to look them directly in the eye -”you must not give in to it.”

“Hey, we’ve been all good so far, right?” Merle snorts, “what’s some dusty old cup got on us?”

“Not much, my man.”

“I assure you I’m quite aware of your talents when it comes to dealing with this, but I’m afraid this job is different,” she leans back in her chair, she can’t help it. This is exhausting. “In that lab is our scientific advisor, Lucas.”

“Hold the phone,” Taako perks up and she pauses, “now hand the phone to me,” she gestures to him, “thank you. So, like, Lucas like the guy who keeps sending Johan letters about experimenting on the Voidfish Lucas or some other Lucas?”

“Ah, so you are aware of him.”

“Yeah! What an asshole!” Magnus sputters out, laughing as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Yes, that- that’s also a word I’d use to describe him.” Maybe it’s the mixture of crushing anxiety and feeling of utter betrayal, but she’s sure in that moment that Lucas is an asshole. She’s not wrong.

“Okay, so what’s his deal? Why’s he being such a fucknut to the Voidfish?”

“I couldn’t tell you. Honestly I haven’t heard from him personally in weeks.” She can see the questions rising in them - especially in Magnus - so she decides to save herself some trouble; “Lucas is a-” she sighs, “a dear friend.”

“Right,” Magnus rolls his shoulder, shifting in place, “is he a part of the bureau?”

“No,” It’s about the only definite thing she had, “I would’ve much prefered him to join us but he-” she sighs for what feels like the thousandth time that hour, the weight of a heavy regret rests on her shoulders, “he refused.”

“And you didn’t send him away after that?”

“No? Look, Lucas may be-”

“An asshole.”

“Total dipshit.”

“The worst.”

“-All of those things, yes, but he is still a valuable ally to have. We owe a lot of our success to his experiments,” she moves to gesture to the office dome they’re in and then outside to the rest of the base, “none of this would have been possible without him.”

“I feel like I’m gonna regret asking but how so?”

She stands, ushering them to a nearby window and when they join her the four of them look out onto the base. It’s simple yet efficient, but not lacking in aesthetics that’s for sure.

“So which one of ya was it that really liked domes?” Merle chuckles, shrugging out a lazy gesture towards all the various well, domes.

“That one uh, that one was a team effort.”

“‘Course it was.”

“You get my point, though. Were it not for Lucas’ involvement in the bureau’s creation we wouldn’t be where we are today.” She’s wistful, and she’s sure at least one of them has picked up on it and prays that they have the tact not to ask.

“If this guy’s so important then why didn’t he join up?” It seemed the Gods liked ignoring Lucretia’s prayers as much as Magnus liked asking questions she couldn’t fully answer.

“That,” she starts, turning her back on the world outside of her office, “is an issue for another time. For now I need the three of you, along with a group of regulators, to go and recover the relic.”

“What about Lucas?”

When Magnus asks it’s innocent, it’s routine, and there’s that concern that leaks into his voice when he’s asking questions. He wants a transparency that she simply cannot give him, at least not now. The question in itself sets a weight on her shoulders that she’s never felt before, it’s a cold, hard weight that doesn’t shift even as she finds her way back into the comfortable groove of her chair.

“Despite what has transpired your mission follows normal parameters. Taako, Magnus, Merle you are in charge of retrieving the relic - not Lucas. Once you’re able to get it away from him do not let him anywhere near it.” As she begins to speak again, there’s a knock at the door and Killian enters, crossbow at her side.

“You called for me, boss?”

“You’re right on time,” and she shifts in her seat to face Killian properly as she makes her way up to the desk, “it’s time for the regulators to roll out. I am sending you in to extract and detain Lucas for his abuse of confidential information.” Killian nods, the boys shift their gazes between the two women as she speaks. “Standard protocol applies. If he-” she sucks in a deep breath, “if he makes a move for the relic-”

“You got it.” Killian finishes for her, a knowing look in her eyes, and begins walking out of the room.

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait you didn’t finish your sentence. What’ll happen?” Taako perks up, suddenly quite curious if his tone is anything to go by. Killian stops at the door and looks at them over her shoulder and simply says:  
“Bad stuff.”

Before walking out and the door swings shut behind her with a click. The moment settles and Lucretia lets herself sit and allows it all to sink in. Magnus is the first to turn back to her.

“Director, how well do you-”

 _“Lucretia,”_ comes a soft, muffled call.

“The fuck was that?”

 _“Lucretia can you hear me?”_ It comes again and now she can tell where from. It’s her stone of farspeech. She fishes it out of her shirt, mortified.

“Who is this? How did you get this frequency?”

 _“It-”_ it cuts out, static fills the silence, _“it’s Lucas. Can you hear me? It’s me, it’s Lucas. Fuck, I hope this works.”_

“Y-yes, Lucas, I can hear you.” She’s sputtering and stumbles over her words just enough for it to be noticeable, holding the stone in front of her and trying her best to hold it the fuck together. “What’s going on? What have you-”

_“I really uh, I really fucked this one up.”_

“No shit.” Merle barely raises his voice to make sure he’s heard, Lucretia can all but feel Lucas wincing on the other side.

 _“It’s the Chalice, I uh, I used it. I-”_  
“Yeah, we got that part, the fuck did you do with it?” Magnus leans in, speaking in her stead and resting his large arm on the desk with a thud.

 _“Who- who is this? Lucretia are you there?”_ He sighs into his stone and what comes out on their side is loud static. _“I don’t want to talk with some- some weirdo right now.”_ And it’s almost funny, she can tell he’s trying to be civil, as calm as possible. She can see him pushing up his glasses and fixing his coat as he speaks.

“I’m here, Lucas,” is what she manages to say, pinching the bridge of her nose. “What have you done?”

 _“I-”_  
The static rolls back in. Well, it’s more like it drowns out every other sound coming from the stone and then nothing. Complete and utter silence. Somehow, it’s worse. Merle is the one to break it:

“Your name is Lucretia?” He always was one to focus on the important details.

“Yes,” and she’s utterly mortified. This could not be further from how this night was supposed to go. A personal line had been crossed now that the boys knew her name, but in a way she knew it was going to happen eventually. “That’s not important right now,” she recovers, tucking the stone on her necklace between her shirt and the flowing cardigan she wrapped around herself, “you three need to go down to the hangar with Killian and Avi will see the six of you off.”

“Lucretia, how well do you know Lucas? How long have you known him?” Magnus straightens up to question her, she’s noticed by now that when he asks questions he has a tone in his voice unlike when he’s just talking. It’s obviously meant to be as unobtrusive as possible while also getting him the answers he wants. Lucretia knows this tone of voice, hell she’s probably used it herself, and she doesn’t feel all too strongly about it either way. It’s a tactic to get what he wants - in this case information - and he probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it. There is one thing that bothers her though. He’s using her name.

“I would appreciate you not calling me that, for starters.”

“Madam Director Lucretia,” He began again and she sighed - it’d do for now, “is it possible that any of this is a trick? Would Lucas do that?”

“I have known Lucas for many, many years and I- I wouldn’t know him to do something like that on such a scale.” It’s difficult, she knows Lucas. She knows the boy he was and the man he grew into, she knows his nervous habits and she knows the kind of tricks he could play. If she thinks back hard enough she can remember him jumping out from behind doors, making her jump and drop documents all over the floor. Lucas wasn’t the kind of person to fool others, not out of malice. If he wanted to be cruel he’d do it in more subtle ways but you’d really, really have to fuck with him to get him to that point.

“We worked together to make the bureau what it is, I already told you without him none of this would’ve gotten off the ground.”

“And it was just you two doin’ all this?” Merle chimes in, pushing his half moon glasses up a notch on his round nose.

“There were...others, of course.” It’s hard not to rattle off the names, hell they killed Brian for Christ’s sake, but there’s just the one that really sticks out. It’s Maureen, who else could it have been to wiggle her way back into the front of Lucretia’s mind right now? It was her son out there, it was her that helped Lucas become who he is and without her both she and the bureau would be nothing. She needed to steer away from this. Business first, she could wade through her thoughts later. “But surely you know the Miller family? Everyone does to some extent, they’ve brought countless inventions into existence - I mean, if you’ve ever been on an elevator you must know of them.”

“It’s always elevators,” Taako mutters, getting a short chuckle from Merle.

“Now I’m not on Ango’s level of...boy detective...ness,” Magnus begins, poising himself.

“Oh, well don’t let me stop you,” she says, leaning back into her chair once more. Merle and Taako give a snort in response.

“Keep the dream alive, Mags,” Merle says, giving a humoured huff and patting Magnus’ leg in a way that you might see someone pet a dog.

 _“Haha,”_ he says rather than laughs, “but for real though, the relics we’ve encountered so far have all had a pretty strong influence on whoever gets hold of them, do you think Lucas might still be under its thrall?”

“The fact he managed to contact us is a sign he’s at least-” she finds herself fiddling with the chain around her neck, it’s suddenly become unbearably heavy, “he’s at least able to recognise this- this colossal fuck up.” The room is relatively still, the only real movement coming from Merle scratching his beard and Taako shifting from one foot to the other. It’s making her nervous, more so than she already is. “What this means once you get in there I don’t know. All that matters is that we are able to get a hold of and destroy the Chalice before it does any more damage.”

They nod and exchange formalities, Magnus’ eyes linger on her, as they tend to do, and it’s painful. She can feel his gaze burning holes through the shield she’s managed to put up for this entire conversation and it finally wears her down just a touch.  
“Be careful, boys.” Is what she ends up saying as they leave but everything in her is screaming to tell them to bring Lucas back safely. She doesn’t want the last thing she ever said to him to be a question, an accusation. She wants him to come home.

The boys say nothing other than a swift ‘you got it’ as they leave, Magnus looks back one last time before they go and the door to her office swings shut behind them.

It had been a long time since Lucretia had allowed herself to cry. Gods willing tonight wouldn’t be the one change that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys meet some familiar faces, Lucretia watches them go.

Avi’s waiting for them at the hangar, leaning lazily on a railing and chatting to Killian and two other figures they don’t quite recognise. One’s small, like Merle-small, but if Merle was built like a tiny brick shit house, and the other’s long blue tail and short but no doubt sharp horns are poking out from behind Killian.

“There you guys are,” Avi yawns, calling them over to where the four of them are standing. “It’s about time, Carey was getting antsy.”

“Pfft, it’s been ages since we got to go out and kick butt.” Carey, the dragonborn, pops out from behind Killian, grinning big and wide. “Carey Fangbattle at your service!”

“Magnus Burnsides,” he smiles back and shakes her hand - it’s softer than he thought it’d be, what with the scales and all. “This is Merle and-”

“Taako, don’t wear it out.” He lazily points a finger at her and mimes shooting and Carey laughs as big and as loud as she smiles.

“Boyland.” The dwarf announces himself, voice gravelly and smoke drifting out of his mouth as he ashes a cigar and appears to take note of each of them but didn’t seem particularly impressed.

“Guess this is our first mission together in a while huh, Killian?”

“Yeah, this one couldn’t possibly go _that_ bad,” and she shrugs, but they all feel the sting it leaves behind. It was so long ago now Magnus could no longer feel the stiffness on the skin of his palm from when he’d had the bright idea to high-five a grand relic. “It’ll be fine,” she suddenly assures them, “you’re good at what you do and we’re damn good at what we do.”

“Hell yeah.” Carey shoots them another wide grin, Boyland gives them a thumbs up.

“We’re all set so we’ll see you over there, Avs.”

“Yeah, no prob, I’ll catch these guys up and shoot you all out of another canon.”

“Sweet, see you guys on the flip side.” Killian and her crew make their way over to the pods, clambering in one after another.

“Alright _well,_ you guys know how this goes pretty much,” Avi shrugs, leaning on a railing, visibly tired. “The only thing that’s kinda different is how you’re gonna get into this lab, I can’t launch you directly in there since there’s the bubble _and_ a bunch of closed doors in the way. The bubble’s no biggie, the rest you’re gonna have to figure out once you’re there.”

“Cool, so if we don’t find a way in we get to freeze to death in space.” Merle says, half sarcastic, tugging on the ends of his beard.

“Ha, no. I mean, probably not?”

“Real comforting, Avi. Thanks.”

“Pfft, no but for real you’ll probably be fine,” he chuckles, “the bubble seems to be stabilizing the outside atmosphere so you don’t have to worry. Plus, you get to put on a sweet space suit.”

“There goes my lifelong dream of being a space popsicle,” Taako shrugs, heading over to where said sweet space suits were hanging up, “not really my style but I guess I’ll take it.”

They all change and it’s a snug fit but that’s not what’s bothering Magnus. For better or worse he can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to this than just a one-off giant fuck up from the bureau’s obviously very important scientific advisor. It’s nagging at him but he knows he can’t exactly run back into Lucretia’s- the Director’s, he corrects himself, office and demand the full story. He’s curious, not an asshole. So he does the next best thing: he asks Avi.

“Hey Avs, you got a sec before you shoot us into space?”

“‘Course, what’s up?”

“Do you uh, d’you know anything about Lucas?”

“Like in general or…?” He takes a short swig of his brandy, Magnus kind of wants to ask for some but knows by now not to, at least not on the way _out_ of the base.

“I mean, like, anything. Have you met him?”

“Once or twice, he never really stuck around.” He shrugs and covers his mouth as he yawns. “Kind of a jerk but I don’t really know him, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Magnus feels himself exhale. Time to get more to the point. “What about the Director? Do you know anything about them?”

“Uh,” Avi raises a skeptical eyebrow, obviously wary from not only being up so late but also from Magnus’ pretty relentless line of questioning. “I dunno, man, he’s been around longer than I have. D’you mind me askin’ what this is about?”

“Oh,” he starts, his mind catching up with what was happening all at once, “my bad, I just wanted an idea of what to expect when we get in there.”

“Yo, Magnum Dong! Are you coming or what?” Taako yells from a pod across from him, hoisting Merle into it with him. Avi snorts at the nickname.

“Yeah, one sec!” He gives Avi a warm pat on the shoulder, “thanks, man. You’re great.”

“Thanks, good luck.” He pushes off the railing, giving Magnus a lazy salute as he clambers into the pod and buckles up.

“What was that about?” Merle pokes his head around from the seat in front of him.

“Can’t I just want to talk to Avi?” He scoffs, not wanting to worry them.

“Right now, though?”

He doesn’t get a chance to answer and he’s a little glad for it. They fly out, set on a course for the lab that’s not too far under them now. The landing isn’t smooth, going through the bubble feels like passing through a brick wall and they smack into the roof of the lab unceremoniously, bouncing off it and back into the bubble and then back again.

There’s no sign of Killian and her crew other than the other pod that’s in the centre of the roof. They hop out, thankfully able to see an airlock door that Magnus manages to pry open just enough to let them slip in.

 

Inside everything is eerily still. The place is almost clinical, whites and muted greenish blues being just about the only colours they can see and it’s clean, almost as though people haven’t come through in years.

“Okay, now what?” Taako says, popping the dome of his suit off, he and Merle follow suit.

“I guess we just walk through until we find Lucas and the chalice.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Taako shrugs, walking towards a door leading further into the lab. “What then, though?”

“Uhh, let’s figure that out on the way there.” Merle hops over to the next door and they make their way into a room that’s really more of an entrance hall that leads into a few different areas.

“Great,” Merle huffs, “so where d’ya wanna go? We’ve got options.”

Magnus points to the door in the centre, “when have elevators ever let us down?”

“Literally every single time.” Taako scoffs, pointing to the sign above the door with the umbra staff. “Were you not there when the last elevator we got in was full of vines that tried to _eat_ my _dick?_ ”

“They tried to eat all of our dicks, Taako.”

“Not mine.” Merle says, smug about the apparent lack of appetite the vines had for his dick. Magnus already regretted bringing up elevators.

“Can we _please_ not revisit what plants have and haven’t tried to eat your dick? I’m still traumatised from the last time you and plants got together.” Taako clutches the umbra staff to his chest and shudders, letting out a sound of pure, unadulterated disgust. Despite protests they end up walking into the elevator room.

_“Who are you guys?”_ Comes a slightly southern drawl, but there’s no one in the room.

“The fuck was that?”

_“It was me? Who are you?”_

“Real descriptive there, buddy. Who’s talking?”

_“Um, try looking up. There’s a mirror up here.”_

“Oh shit, so we got talking mirrors now. That’s new.” Taako spots the source of the voice first. Merle lets out an appreciative ‘ooh’ when he sees it. It’s a tiny mirror similar to something you’d see in a store to help the shopkeeper look out for troublemakers. In the mirror, rather than their reflections, there’s a figure but it’s too fuzzy to see clearly.

_“Yeah. So who are you guys?”_ They ask, the figure in the mirror flickering as they speak.

“Well I’m Taako, flip wizard extraordinaire,” he flicks his arms out to make a little show of introducing himself, “this is Magnus and Merle. They’re also pretty okay I guess.”

“We’re looking for Lucas.” Magnus interjects, unsure, but wanting to move.

_“Oh my,”_ they suddenly seem worried. Wonderful. _“Y’all are really on a mission huh?”_

“Yeah, this lab is pretty fucked, you’ve seen the bubble right?”

_“How couldn’t I? It’s kinda hard to miss,”_ they sound almost like they’re shrugging. _“I’m Noelle, by the way. Pleasure to meet y’all.”_

“You too, uh, did you happen to see another group like us pass through here?” Magnus waits a second before realising _duh,_ he should probably elaborate. “Big orc lady-”

“Huge.” Taako interrupts before gesturing for him to continue.

“A blue dragonborn,” he waits for Taako’s next interjection.

“Slightly less huge.” There it is.

“And a dwarf,”

“Significantly less huge.”

_“Can’t say that I have, sorry fellas.”_ She’s genuinely apologetic, the light figure in the mirror shifting slightly as if she were moving to think harder.

“Are you, like, trapped in this mirror?”

_“Oh, no, not this one specifically anyway.”_ She says, sheepish like she’s not quite sure how it works yet. _“I hopped up in this one when I heard y’all bustin’ through the doors back there.”_

“For the record I tried being gentle with it.” He rubs the back of his neck, wooden doors were way easier to deal with than these fancy airlocks. He was pretty sure he’d broken it trying to squeeze through but it was nothing that couldn’t be buffed out with a punch or two.

_“You guys are looking for Lucas, right?”_ There’s a slight smile in her voice now. _“You’ll probably have to go through most of this floor, I think he’s on the lower levels right now.”_

“Great,” Merle groans, scratching at his beard. “And how long will that take us, d’you reckon?” He asks, not even really looking in the direction of the mirror. He’s looking up and out of a nearby window, the night sky still dark and blanketed by stars. Magnus wonders for a second if Merle looks at the stars often or if he’s looking at something else.

_“Not too long if you hurry it up,”_ if he squints he can almost see the figure in the mirror shrug. _“Don’t know if y’all noticed but things are kinda messed up in here.”_

“Yeah, uh, we noticed.” Magnus rolls his shoulders, the bones cracking slightly as he does. Taako looks at him like it was the most disgusting thing in the world and they share a brief chuckle.

“D’you know maybe just how fucked things are in here?” Taako says, leaning forward slightly on the umbra staff, looking up at Noelle’s mirror with a lazy smile. “I figure we’re gonna be in here a while and it’d be nice to know what we’re getting into, exactly.”

_“Well,”_ she drawls, thinking, _“there’s not much that’ll do you harm in here if you’re careful. There’s some sharp glass around though. You’d best be movin’ along, honestly.”_

“Why’s that?”

_“You guys are smart, you’ll figure it out.”_

“Riiiiiight, yeah.” The three of them exchange a knowing look. “So, to the lower levels?”

“Way ahead of you, big guy,” Taako’s already turned around, sauntering through the next door.

“Noelle are you gonna come with us? Somehow?” Merle turns his attention to her fully before following Taako’s lead.

_“If there’s a reflective surface in there I’ll try and pop in it.”_

“Wouldn’t it be easier if we just-” He starts, jumping to reach the metal pole attaching the mirror to the high wall, “sorry about this,” he yanks it off in a couple of hard tugs.

_“Oh, well, that works just as well.”_ She chuckles as the four of them make their way further into Lucas’ lab.

 

 

She watches them go. The white fluffy trail coming off the ends of the two pods making it easy to see them dip into the bubble, crossing over into something she doesn’t want to begin to imagine. But she does. She sits in her chair and pours a glass of red wine, the colour is familiar but something about it shakes her and she barely manages a sip before pouring it away.

She can see all the white walls and the tiled floors, she can hear her heels clicking on it as she’s taken through the various chambers.

“This is amazing,” she says, bringing her hands together, barely able to contain her excitement. “You really outdid yourselves!”

“Pfft, Lucretia this is just a prototype, we’re already working on making the bureau’s base way bigger.” Lucas chuckles, smug as he spins around on his heels to face her. He smiles so big, so proud, as he leads her into the main lab. “Mom? Lu’s here.”

The woman lifts her head up from peering into a microscope, a smile rising to fill her warm face. Lucretia feels her heart skip a beat when she looks at her.

_Maureen._

“You made it!” She beams, taking Lucretia’s hands in hers.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She smiles back, smaller but just as warmly. They kiss each other’s cheeks and Lucas makes an exaggerated gagging noise next to them, moving over to his work bench. They chuckle and Maureen lowers their hands, slipping her fingers through Lucretia’s and leading her over to a large window that looks over the still water sea.

“We’re almost there,” Maureen almost whispers, voice full of pride and joy, “soon we’ll be able to really make a difference.” She squeezes Lucretia’s hand.

“I hope so,” she squeezes back. “It’s all happening so fast! I never- I never dreamed we’d get this far.”

Maybe it’s just how the moment feels, maybe it’s the soft light of the sunrise over the planet below and how that looks on Maureen’s face, reflecting off her glasses and bathing her dark skin in it’s pinkish light, but she can’t stop herself from kissing her.

It’s soft and light, she was always soft. Maureen gives Lucretia’s hand a gentle squeeze and brings the other up to cup her cheek. She chuckles, laughter bubbling from her throat, into the kiss before they part. They stay close, foreheads touching and the fabric of Maureen’s hijab still between her fingers. It’s silky, smooth and soft, just like she is, fabric dyed that familiar wine red. Then, all at once, Lucretia is in the air. Maureen’s arms wrap around her waist and spins her around, once, twice, three times, giggling the whole way.

“You two are gonna knock something over if you’re not careful,” Lucas says, but his voice has a smile in it that betrays him. The two of them laugh, turning back to look out the window and Lucas joins them, standing in the middle, his head just reaching their shoulders. Apparently she and Maureen both have the same idea and end up awkwardly putting both their arms on Lucas’ shoulders. They all laugh, looking out over the still waters under them. Lucretia never wants this moment to end.

But it does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for the feedback on chapter one! i was pretty nervous posting but you've all been so lovely !!  
> we finally got to some of the actual maureen/lucretia content in this one, i promise there's a lot more to come alongside the boys getting through the lab haha  
> as always you can reach me on my [twitter](https://twitter.com/umbrastaff) or [tumblr](https://umbrastaffs.tumblr.com/) if you've any questions or just wanna chill!


	3. Tick Tock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys look around an elevator museum and piss off a robot. It goes as well as you'd expect.

The lab is comfortably cold as they enter into an area that at first seems to just be full of clutter but flicking on the lights reveals it to be a museum of sorts. It goes almost wall to wall with little exhibits, some much larger than others but none were as grand as one in the very centre: The Elevator Of Tomorrow. 

It’s a little dome over a tiny scale model of the town of Neverwinter, Magnus stops to look at it more closely and inside he can see all the details of the buildings, little wooden signs painted to match the real thing and there’s even furniture in most of the rooms.

“Did Lucas make all this?”

_ “I should think so, there hasn’t been another person in the lab for a long time.” _

“Huh,” it gives him a pause, and a pretty big one at that. It’d been a pretty consistent theme that Lucas was sort of an asshole, and it was very easy to accept that having spoken to him however briefly, but if that’s all he was - and it very well could be - why would he go to such effort for this tiny museum? “How long have you been here, Noelle?”

_ “Oh, me? A couple-a month’s maybe? It’s kinda hard to keep track of time here.” _

“And how long has the uh, bubble been around?”

_ “Longer than I have.”  _ The way she says it is sullen, like she’s remembering something unpleasant.

“Sorry,” he covers, not wanting to upset her and feeling a little guilty that he might have. Despite this his eyes still manage to wander to Merle and Taako, who've taken it upon themselves to mess with some of the exhibits. Taako's pulled out a pen from who knows where and is doodling on one of the old elevators that has a...face?

_ “S’fine, things just aren’t quite right here,”  _ as he looks into the mirror he can see the figure just a touch more clearly up close. She’s still blurry and light but she’s there, a small girl in a simple dress like the ones- his breath hitches in his throat- like the ones Julia used to wear.  _ “Y’all don’t have that much time in this one, might wanna get a move on.” _

“In this what?”

_ “You’ll know.” _

“That’s real nice, Noelle, how’d you know I love crypticism with my space suicide missions?” Merle snorts, making his way past the model town. “C’mon, let’s get this over with.”

They leave the museum one by one, Magnus lagging ever-so-slightly behind, looking at the exhibits for just a second longer. Some of them were so old he barely recognised them as elevators - the bucket was definitely not one he expected - and others were hilariously tacky - Upsy: your lifting friend (as it turns out, the elevator with a face had a name and was leaking goo all over it's section of the museum and Taako's new boots) was mildly horrifying at the same time. But, he realised as he turned his head slightly back, almost none of these had anything to do with Lucas. The only thing of his in the room was the Elevator of Tomorrow and a tiny fake town he made himself.

Magnus wonders if Lucas was ever lonely.

 

“What the fuck is that?” Taako squints, looking through a glass window into an almost empty room. The lights are off and it’s hard to see, but there’s a figure in there. It’s not huge, but it’s kind of...square?

_ “That’s Hodgepodge.”  _

“What the fuck is a Hodgepodge?” Merle raises an eyebrow, leaning on the doorframe. He slips a bit, coughing when he straightens up.

_ “He’s like, a teaching robot? Lucas made him to help kids.”  _

“Huh,” now that was unexpected - well, as unexpected as something could be from a guy Magnus didn’t really know at all. It was nagging at him, too, not knowing much about Lucas. He’d spoken to him for half a second and been thoroughly shut out, not that it would’ve really been possible to talk to him like that anyway. ‘Some weirdo’ he was, but he couldn’t shake the look on the Director’s face. She was worried, moreso than usual. The lines on her face had deepened more than they usually did, even when she was very deep in thought. More than anything, he wanted to know why.

_ “The quickest way is through his room so…if you guys wanna go in, that’d be cool.”  _

“Right, yeah, let’s do that.”

They step in and suddenly the silence that’d settled comfortably was filled with whirring. Blue lights flicker up ahead and the figure in front of them slowly stands upright.

_ “Hello, kids! Please select a topic!” _

“Oh boy.” Merle laughs behind his hand, scratching his beard. A flew flecks of dirt - was that a sunflower seed? - fall out as he does. Taako recoils from it, letting everyone in the room know what he thinks of that with a loud ‘ugh.’

_ “‘Oh boy’ is not a topic! Please select a correct topic for your quiz!” _

“Can we skip this? Like, can we just go, please?” Taako starts making his way past Hodgepodge’s stand. It’s then Magnus notices the layer of soot on the ground.

“Taako, hold up a sec!”

“Oh my God, what? We have  _ shit _ to  _ do!” _

“Yeah, but look-”

“Look man, you might find a dumb robot kid quiz to be the height of entertainment, but I wanna get back to my room, I’m missing  _ so _ many Candlenights specials because this fuckin’ Lucas guy couldn’t keep his shit together for  _ five minutes _ and-”

Then there’s a click. Following the click there’s fire.

“What the  _ fuck?! _ ” Taako all but shrieks, the end of his cape now singed but thankfully  _ not _ on fire.

“I fuckin’ told you not to put that thing on the outside of your nullsuit.”

“Yeah, dad, because we knew there was going to be a robot that loves burning expensive articles of clothing in a fucking space lab!”

“Did you just call Merle ‘dad?’”

“No! Oh my God!”

_ “Wow! You guys just don’t know when to stop do you?”  _ The cheer in the robot's voice suddenly has an uncomfortable edge to it and they stop in their tracks. As if to add emphasis, Hodgepodge’s screen-face blinks, once, twice, and then it’s red.

“Oh, that’s gotta be a good sign,” Merle chuckles nervously, shimmying away from Hodgepodge’s stand.

Then, from somewhere below them, there’s a shudder that throws them all of balance. Merle slips up first, then Taako, and then Magnus drops Noelle’s mirror. It cracks straight down the middle and for a split second he can see her behind the glass.

Hodgepodge’s stand breaks and he falls onto them, there’s a metallic screech and the sound of glass breaking. Magnus moves, unthinking, to Merle and Taako and does his best to cover them with his body.

Everything goes white. And out of the whiteness comes a calm, almost sorrowful voice:

“You’ll have to be a bit faster than that, I’m afraid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to loop town
> 
> sorry this one's so short! the next chapter will be much longer and have much more lucretia, and therefore be way better...and hopefully it'll go up much sooner, too! thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johann pays Lucretia a visit, the boys are terrible at general knowledge.

“Hey, Director? You in here?” Comes a low voice, along with a short rapping knock on her door. She sighs, willing herself away from the window and back to her desk.

“Come in, Johann.”

He does, slowly peeling the door open and first peering in to see where she is then making his way over to her.

“What can I do for you?”

“It’s just, uh, you sent everyone to go see Lucas right?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

He stands in front of the desk, fiddling with a small stack of papers in his hands. She glances at them in a way that lets him know she’s seen them and then back at his face. His usual dark circles are present, he hasn’t been sleeping properly again.

“Well, um, I thought you might wanna read these.” He flops the papers onto her desk, it’s uneven stack and a few of them slide further forward, some of them are dog-eared and frayed at the edges.

“These are…?” She asks, as if she doesn’t know they’re the letters from Lucas. Even at a glance she’d know his chicken scratch handwriting anywhere. She knows it like her own, she still has birthday cards from years ago in the drawers of her her bedside table.

“Letters I got from Lucas about the Voidfish and junk,” he shrugs, “I thought you might wanna read ‘em.”

She wants to ask him why he’d think that, to keep up a bit of a wall concerning this, but Johann’s been around too long to fall for such a cheap trick. Taking a hold of a few of the letters, she looks up at him and gives a weak smile. “Thank you, Johann.”

“No prob, he uh, he mentioned you a couple of times.”

“What?”

It’s such a simple thing but it hits like a ton of bricks. Lucas had mentioned her to Johann. She scans the letter in her hands for anything of the sort, but doesn’t find it quite as quickly as she’d like.

“Yeah sometimes he’d like, ask after you? In between bitching about the Voidfish and how we don’t _really_ know what it is, anyway.” He scratches the back of his neck awkwardly, letting out a huff when he mentions Lucas’ fascination with what the Voidfish is. “I never sent anything back to him, obviously, but, like, it’s still there I guess?”

“Thank you for bringing these to me, Johann,” is all she says. She could say more, and wants to, but it’s enough for now.

“No worries, I’ll uh, get going now then? I’ve got a new piece I’m working on.”

“Alright, I look forward to hearing it.”

“Yeah, okay,” he laughs a little, turning to leave. “Later.”

“Be safe,” she calls after him and he gives her a little thumbs up.

“You too.”

It’s with a sigh that he leaves, clicking the door shut all the way, the crumpling of paper the only sound under her fingers and she flicks through all of the letters, catching the edge of one just a little too harshly and giving herself a paper cut. It's right in the space where her nail meets her finger, too. _Wonderful,_ she thinks, putting it in her mouth with a hiss. There’s fifteen of them in all, some are printed and others are handwritten, they’re all on branded Miller paper - the family initials printed on the bottom corner of each sheet in deep, navy blue.

She doesn’t know if it’s a relief to know he’d asked about her or if it’s simply heightening her anxiety. She feels the paper slip into the lapping flames of her worrying pyre, the imagined smoke stinging her eyes.

_Has Madam Director seen my reports?_

_Tell Madam Director to consider my proposal on the Voidfish._

_Is_ ~~_Lucretia_ ~~ _Madam Director doing well?_

It’s all so many little things. It’s obvious he’s tried to keep it all very professional - it’s harder to yell at people through written word anyway - but he slips and calls her by her name, even if it’s scribbled out. She runs a finger over the mess of lines covering it up and sighs, putting the letter down with the rest.

Most of them are just asking Johann for cooperation in his ‘research’ and asking what they _really_ knew about the Voidfish and where it came from. He wasn’t wrong, she supposed, but he could’ve been less heavy handed in his delivery. She can’t keep from chuckling, he hasn’t changed a bit. He always was one to get right to the point of something, no time for dancing around the subject.

She can remember a time when Lucas was much, much younger - and so was she, to some extent - and the three of them were eating breakfast together when, after staring at her for quite some time, he'd put down his spoon, looked her dead in the eye and said:

"You have a crush on my mom, don't you?"

She'd sputtered and choked on her tea, Maureen, thankfully, was elsewhere and didn't see how her face darkened in colour and she barely managed to get out a response.

"That's, um,"

"I know you do. 'Cause you keep looking at her when she's busy with this dopey look on your face."

"Uh," he always was very...observant. At this point, she wasn't quite as open with her affections as she'd like to be, but Lucas' father hadn't long left them and more than she wanted Maureen to love her, she wanted Maureen to be happy and comfortable. So she waited.

"It's alright. I like you so I won't tell."

"Th-thank you, Lucas..."

"You're welcome." He takes a big sip of juice as if he hadn't said anything at all. "Your cereal is going to get mushy."

 

It’s in the last letter, dated just two months ago, that he mentions finding something that could be useful in finding out the truth about the Voidfish. He doesn’t mention it by name, he’s too smart for that, but she knows what it was. The Temporal Chalice. There was nothing else it could possibly be. He’d had the Temporal Fucking Chalice for over two months. How long had he known of its whereabouts? How long did it take to find it? How long had it taken to enthral him? Her stomach churns and her head spins, two whole months and she’d had no idea.

Guilt, of course, is what bubbles up next. If she’d just spoken to him, if she’d sent a message, if she’d seen any of this and just _said something_ maybe none of this would’ve happened. It’s like a knife at her throat, a hot poker at her back, the executioners heavy axe hovering before it makes its swift descent. It’s absurd but the only thing she can do is laugh, broken and bitter, she’d failed at everything she ever set out to do.

 

 

“Hey guys? Yeah, uh, guys? What the _fuck_ was that?” Taako swirls around to face them, confusion plastered on his face. They were back at the entrance of the lab.

“I- oh boy,” Merle says, going to scratch his head only to have his hand recoil off the glass helmet he was wearing again. He makes a muted ‘ow’ and shakes his hand with a hiss.

“Alright, I don’t know what the hell just happened but we gotta get back through Hodgepodge’s garbage room.”

“Yeah, okay, sure, but you heard that right? The woman?”

“Yeah, I heard her alright,” Merle shudders as they make their way through the museum, quicker this time. Magnus’ eyes still linger on the model town for just a moment, but he keeps pace. He can worry about Lucas’ somewhat shoddy woodwork later.

“Oh shit, hold on,” he suddenly remembers something, and he turns around to face the room they just passed through.

“What?”

“I gotta grab that mirror for Noelle.”

“Oh right, where is she?”

“I dunno, she could still be in the room with Hodgepodge?” He says, voice slightly strained as he rips the mirror off the wall again and lands with a thud.

“Anyways though, what do you think she meant?”

“I think it was pretty obvious what she meant, my dude,” Taako rolls his eyes, almost hopping from one foot to the other as they pick up the pace, landing right back in Hodgepodge’s room. “We gotta hurry this shit up.”

_“Hello children! Please select a topic!”_

The three of them can’t help but groan in response, this was going to take a good minute for them to crack. A good minute they didn’t really have.

“You got like a pop quiz mode? Trivia or whatever,” Taako says, leaning dangerously close to Hodgepodge’s glowing screen-face, the blue-green light reflecting off his glass helmet obscuring his face just enough to be uncomfortable. Upon hearing his words Hodgepodge’s face flashed a very short loading screen and he perked right up.

_“Yes! Please select a level for-”_

“Ooh, but do you have a carpentry quiz for dear old Maggie here? He’d just _love_ that.” Merle pipes up, taking a step closer to the base of the robot, evidently more confident in his approach now that Taako had broken the ice with it.

“Merle, no-”

“Nothing on how to make chairs in there, tincan?” He scoffs, knocking the back of his hand on the bottom end of Hodgepodge’s metal torso.

_“You guys really-”_

“Don’t know when to stop, yeah, we know.” Magnus rolls his eyes, eager to get this over with and move on to finding Lucas and the Chalice.

_“Wow, you’re rude too! Shocker!”_ Hodgepodge buzzes, snappy but a smile still flickering on the screen. _“Wanna pick a topic now, smart guy?”_

“I’d rather just move on if it’s all the same to you.”

_“That’s no fun.”_

It’s around the time Hodgepodge finishes speaking and the distinct click of a lock echoes through the room that Magnus thinks maybe he should’ve just let the robot get his one-liner out.

“The door wasn’t even locked?!” Taako jumps up, bounding over to the door and kicks it, “we could’ve just walked right on through, are you kidding me!? What the fuck?!”

“Whoops.”

“Whoops? Whoops!?”

_“Pick a topic!”_

“I’ll fuckin’ pick a topic, I swear to God, I am not dying to a quizbot - patent pending - because you-” he swings back around to face Magnus, umbra staff pointed squarely at him, and Merle who is trying his damnedest to keep himself from laughing, “couldn’t just let the damn thing say it’s pre-programmed sass!”

_“How many times do I have to ask you to pick a topic?”_ The screen flickers, but Hodgepodge’s tone never changes - it’s flat, but overly cheerful, and uncomfortable considering how they’re all now completely locked in a room with it.

“Alright, alright, what topics y’got?” Merle pushes forward, once again closing in on Hodgepodge’s space.

_“At your current level you can choose: pop quiz, math-”_

“Pop quiz! We choose pop quiz!” Merle jumps in before Magnus even has a chance to register what the options were.

“Merle do you even-”

_“Good choice!”_

“Great.” He drawls, his eyes wandering away from the brightness of Hodgepodge’s face. “You’re gonna unlock that door and let us through after this right?”

_“Sure!”_

“Oh good, ‘sure’, he says, like a real boy!” Merle guffaws, going to run a hand through his hair only to have it smack against the dome of his suit with a dull _duh-donk._

_“Tick tock, guys,”_ Noelle says, sounding a little nervous and Magnus can’t say he blames her.

“Uh, yeah, is there a way to like, skip _most,”_ he makes a point to stretch out the word, folding his hands in front of his chest, “if not all of this?”

_“Don’t be ridiculous!”_ Hodgepodge jeers at him, screen crackling with what he assumes could pass for excitement. _“Are you ready for your first question?”_

“I guess?”

“I would literally rather be anywhere else.”

“Taako!”

“What!?”

_“Can you tell me who-”_

“Invented math!”

_“Sure why not.”_ Hodgepodge sounds just about done with all this, despite that sickly cheery demeanour that just will not quit.

“Doug Math, my man,” Taako says, crunching down on a baby carrot he apparently pulled from thin-fucking-air.

_“Somehow you actually got that one!”_

“Fuck yeah I did, I know my shit.”

_“Great! Now onto an actual question that actually matters!”_

“Wait, fuck you, that one totally counted!”

_“It was a practice round, silly!”_

“No it wasn’t!” Taako’s right up in Hodgepodge’s face now, yelling at him.

_“Yes it was.”_ The screen blips into bright red.

“Alright! Okay! Relax! Next question!” Taako hops back, hands thrown up defensively.

_“Let’s do something simple to start you off!”_ Hodgepodge flickers to blue again, apparently using the colour red and a surprisingly potent intimidation tactic was something Lucas thought was necessary for a robot that...taught kids? Magnus wonders what kind of school Lucas went to, exactly.

_“In kilometers, what is the distance between Neverwinter and Waterdeep?”_

“Uhh,” Magnus knows this, he swears he does, it’s buried in the back of his mind. He’s definitely travelled a similar stretch or known someone who has, and he can see Taako staring off into space - he’s either concentrating or he’s not paying attention at all - and Merle is counting on his fingers, only to trip up and have to start over. “Any ideas, gang?”

“I’m workin’ on it, it’s gotta be more than fifty right?” Merle says, counting hands paused as he looks up at Magnus.

“I- I mean, it’s gotta be, more than five- _hundred,_ right?”

“Ugh,” Merle groans, hands flopped to his sides.

_“Any day now!”_

“Shut up!”

_“He’s kinda right, y’all. This is takin’ an awful long time,”_ Noelle chimes in, then whispers, _“I suppose I could help y’all out?”_

“Ah, fuck it,” Merle says once again going to rub his face or scratch his beard or something only to have his hand collide with his helmet. _Duh-donk._ “Eight-hundred. I’m goin’ with _eight_ -hundred.”

“Wait, no, that’s not our final answer-”

_“Correct! Good job, kiddo!”_

“Thanks,” Merle snorts, trying to pick dirt out from under his nails even with them being still inside the suit.

“How did you know that?” Magnus stares at him in a fun cocktail of disbelief and confusion.

“What, you’ve never heard of guesstimating?” He shrugs.

“You _winged it!?_ _”_ Taako suddenly snaps back into the moment, voice shrill as he leans down over the umbra staff to smack his own helmet into Merle’s.

“Well, when you put it like that,” he chuckles a little nervously, “but! But, hear me out, this loop is probably gonna end soon so who cares?”

“Y’know, I hate it, I really do, but you’re super not wrong,” Taako flops back, “for once.”

And he was right, the sudden rumble that made its way through the lab made sure they knew their time was up.

“Goddamnit,” he manages to mutter before he hears Hodgepodge’s whirring and voice clips all cycle through at once.

“Oh, jeez,” Merle says to his right.

“What the fuck, what the fuck,” Taako sputters to his left.

“We should move.”

_“Correct! The answer was- please select a topic! History is unavailable at this time. Correct! Hello, kids! Please select a level: child, adult or- incorrect! The answer was- time. Incorrect! Please try again!”_

“Would someone please shut that thing up,” Merle grimaces, hands raised to his chest but unsure of what to do with them.  

“Yeah, it’s freaking me the fuck out,” Taako puts himself behind Magnus, closest to the wall.

_“It’s hard to hear you guys, is everything okay?”_ Noelle’s voice is a small comfort, even if she sounds close to yelling herself.

He doesn’t manage to get a reply out, Hodgepodge’s chorus of garbled pre-programmed sentences becomes a slurry of slurred and broken up ‘ _incorrect!’s_ and _‘please try again!’s_

Then he falls off his stand, still buzzing and slurring with slowed down speech and high pitched groans. Soon Magnus, Merle and Taako are on the ground too, and sooner still there is no ground, and finally, everything is white.

_“Incorrect! Please try again!”_

“Looks like you fellas got a few too many questions wrong this time.”

He sees her, only for a second, her back is turned to them and she’s covered head to toe in deep, brilliant blue. Then she’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, we're getting there! kind of!
> 
> thanks for reading!! i hope you're having a good day!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucretia and Maureen spend a day together. Taako and Merle look at Lucas' baby photos.

The morning air is still and cold on her skin as she stirs from a - for once - restful sleep. She’s still in her twenties and beside her is, of course, Maureen. She’s warm - she was always warm, Lucretia recalls, swirling a freshly poured glass of white wine in her hand - and still dozing, a serene and peaceful expression on her resting face, Lucretia ignores the nag of work waiting on her desk and instead lowers her head back to rest in the space between her arm and her chest.

She doesn’t want to get up, if she could ignore work forever she would. But she can’t, and neither can Maureen, who’s waking up beneath her.

“Good morning,” she says, voice dipped in honey and sleep, as she turns over, wrapping both arms around Lucretia’s back, pulling her as close as she possibly can. Her breath is warm on Lucretia’s shoulder and she wraps her arms around Maureen's waist. “Did you sleep well?”

“For once,” she chuckles, Maureen’s hair tickling her nose as she shuffles up to rest her chin in the crook of her neck. “Did you?”

“Like a rock,” Maureen sighs, placing a gentle kiss on her temple. They separate, though their hands linger - as they often do - on one another for just a moment before they get up.

From there it’s work, it’s always work, but it’s okay because at least they’re able to work together. There’s always more than she wants, though, stacks of books and papers and reports to do and things to fill in and research to be done on this, on that, on everything.

Maureen was a Miller, and so she of course was working on bettering the world with various contraptions, creations and inventions, Lucretia loved them all and admired her more than any woman she’d ever met. Maureen was a gift, someone who would do what she could to make the lives of those around her easier, and she was the woman Lucretia loved.

That morning now seems like a lifetime ago. Too long a time has passed since she was twenty-five, feeling so much younger and so much more powerful. She could’ve done anything back then, with Maureen at her side.

“Coffee?” She’d knocked on the door to Maureen’s more formal laboratory later in the day, a tray of coffee and biscuits she’d picked up a couple of days ago.

“Please,” Maureen spins around in her chair, but goes just a little too far and ends up facing the window to her left rather than Lucretia behind her. She can’t help laughing. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“I want some too!” A call comes from the doorway and Lucas bounds in, eyes ever on the prize.

“Aren’t you a little young for coffee?” She chuckles, extending a finger and booping him square on the nose.

“Um, no,” he says, looking almost thespian levels of offended, “well, maybe,” he concedes, uncrossing his arms, “but I’m not too young for tea! Or biscuits!”

“That  _ is  _ true,” Maureen leans her head to one side, humming, faux-mulling it over, “what do you think, Lu?”

“Hmmm,” she sips her coffee - no milk, two sugars - and opens an eye look at Lucas. He’s staring at her, pleading with his eyes and his hands clasped together at his chest and she can’t possibly say no. “Oh, alright.”

“Yesssss!” He all but jumps for joy, hands reaching towards the plat of biscuits, snapping up not one but two custard creams.

“What do we say, Lucas?” He might be a little old for such reminders, but Lucretia supposes habits like that die hard.

“Fank-” he starts, mouth full, “thank you!” He beams, crumbs dusting his cheeks.

“You’re very welcome,” she smiles, and reaches out to wipe his face. He scrunches up his nose at her but doesn’t complain, Maureen smiles into her cup.

From there he jumps into a grand retelling of the day’s events from his perspective, he read a fantastic book - though the name of it slips Lucretia’s mind now, he always read so many books - and he fixed the clock he took apart the day before, it worked even better now, he was sure. It was hard to believe she’d only been living with them for a few months, and she still remembers the way Maureen’s hand slipped into hers as they listened to Lucas’ story and she felt like she was home.

 

“Well, that didn’t work.”

“Yeah, no shit. Maybe we should just skip the quiz robot.”

“But it locked the door on us when we pissed it off last time.”

“And?”

“And that  _ sucks _ and we died? Or something? Not a big fan of that, honestly!”

“None of us are a fan of dying, Merle, dying is the pits.”

“Look, all I’m saying is from a spiritual standpoint it sucks, and from a regular standpoint it also sucks, so maybe we shouldn’t piss off the extremely unstable robot!”

They’d already yanked down Noelle’s mirror and blasted through the museum, and now they were going over their game plan. They didn’t have time to waste on Hodgepodge right now.

“What if, now hear me out, what if we just ask it something it won’t know the answer to?” Merle says, taking the helmet off his suit to flick a leaf out of his hair.

“What?”

“Like, machines hate paradoxes and shit right? There’s gotta be something it won’t know and that might make it fizzle out long enough that we can get through.”

“That’s. That’s actually a pretty decent plan, Merle.” Magnus blinks, pleasantly surprised. “I mean I’m not sure that’s what a paradox is but that could actually work!”

“Y’could sound less shocked, y’know.”

“But what’re we gonna ask it? It’s a fucking quiz robot, it knows everything Lucas knows at least!” Taako groans, bending back to an almost unnatural looking angle, throwing his hands up to his face.

While Merle lets out an ‘augh’ of the ages at him and the two bicker about flexibility, Magnus looks around for something. A clue, anything that might give away something that Hodgepodge wouldn’t know. It hits him when he looks back into the museum, specifically at the most recent installment.

“I got it, let’s go!” He goes in without another word.

“Hold up, jeezy chreezy,” Taako hops after him, clutching his hat. Merle isn’t far behind, the same look of confusion and concern on his face.

“Hodgepodge!”

_ “Hello kids! Choose your-” _

“I wanna ask  _ you _ something!” He says, not stopping to look at the screen, instead standing right by the door, which, as he suspected, had already been locked.

_ “Please do! Remember, if you stump me, you get a prize!” _

“Do I get to choose my prize?”

_ “From a select few, yes!” _

“Where is he goin’ with this?” Merle nudges Taako as they follow suit, joining him at the door.

“Alright Hodgepodge, who do we work for?”

“Oooh.” Taako and Merle both let out a coo of recognition. Magnus inwardly swells with pride. Hodgepodge, however, sputters, screen-face flickering all they’re set faces, selection screens and numbers. Then it goes blank

“You  _ broke _ it.” Merle chides him, scoffing.

“It was your bright idea!” He barks back.

With a ‘ding’ a light above the door he’s now leaning on turns green and with a _ thwump _ he falls right on through it.

“And, what d’ya know, it worked!” Merle says, laughing as if he doesn’t even quite believe it himself but is thankful it did. From this angle he almost looks as tall as Angus.

“C’mon big guy we gotta gooo,” Taako says, pulling him up, rolling his eyes.

“Alright, where are we now?” He asks, holding the mirror up to the area they’re now in.

_ “Y’should be in the livin’ quarters, or what passes for it.”  _ Noelle chimes.  _ “There might be somethin’ useful hangin’ around though.” _

“Looting, huh? I like your style, Noelle.” Taako grins, flashing her his big white teeth.

_ “Not exactly what I was going for but you do you I guess.”  _ She sighs at him and Magnus thinks he sees her cross her arms.  _ “Not like I can stop you while I’m in here, anyway.” _

“Have you not always been in mirrors?” He asks as they step further into the living quarters.

_ “I don’t think so but I don’t quite, uh, remember? It’s all fuzzy past a certain point.” _

“Oh I hear you there.” Taako calls to her, hopping over what appeared to be a pile of clothes. Now that he was looking, the place was a mess.

He looks the place over and while the floor is still visible, at least, there’s stuff  _ everywhere.  _ Clothes strewn about the place, mostly off-white lab coats and t-shirts of varying colours as far as Magnus can tell, containers of God knows what - ranging in sizes ‘I’m sending cookies to a far-off friend’ to ‘I just bought six fox skulls and I don’t quite know where they fit in my outer space science lab.’ There’s a lot of other science-y paraphernalia floating - albeit not literally - around, he doesn’t really know what any of it’s for so he thinks it’s probably best not to fuck with it for now. The last thing he needs is some nerd throwing a fit because he knocked over a beaker of...science...malarky.  _ Good one,  _ he sighs to himself.

 

Meanwhile, Taako has made his way into one one of the bedrooms. Wading through tacky science garbage to get here was worth it though, this room is spotless. It’s modest and not overly decorated, running his fingers over a white oak desk leaves his fingers coated in dust. He lets out a little ‘eugh’ and is silently glad for the suit keeping him relatively unscathed. He guesses Lucas doesn’t use this room, but then who did? It’s got too many personal touches to be a guest room - like he’d get many guests anyway - the blanket on the bed is much too comfy looking for a guest, popping his helmet open to touch the fabric, wriggling his arm out of the neck-hole and lightly stroking the blanket. He was right. It’s  _ way _ too soft for guests. It’s super old too, now that he feels it, the pink fabric is worn out and faded and if he got closer he imagines it’d probably smell like lavender - because old, comforting things always smell like lavender. Or alcohol, but that’s not the point. 

Deciding it’d probably be kinda weird to lean in and smell the blanket, he wriggles his arm back into his suit and pops his helmet back into place and smooths it out. Back to snooping.

The desk didn’t look all that interesting, just a few notebooks, regular books - blech, no thanks - and some nick-nacks. Paperwork was strewn over it in uneven piles, held down with crystals - Taako recognises them as moonstone and various quartzes. The drawers on either side are, to his surprise, unlocked. Pursing his lips and leaning just far enough away that if, for some reason, whoever lived here booby-trapped their own desk that he wouldn’t be hit - he opens the first drawer.

“Thank Christ,” he sighs as he thankfully isn’t absolutely obliterated. If one more thing got in his hair today Candlenights was fucking cancelled.

Inside the first drawer are envelopes. A lot of them. Most’ve been opened and resealed plenty of times, if the way the paper looks at the seal is anything to go by. He’s  _ very _ tempted to read them, picking up and flicking through a pile, all of them are addressed to ‘Maureen,’ whoever that is. The handwriting is elegant, a (perfectly readable) cursive in blue and black inks. He hums and haws, letting his fingers run against the edges of the letters, making them let out a soft  _ thwip  _ sound.

“Fuck it,” he decides, pulling out a random letter and opening it.

 

_ My dearest Maureen, _

_ Was that too sappy? I’ve been trying to figure out different ways to open letters so they don’t get boring to read. How’s life treating you? Well I hope! I’m writing to you from Neverwinter, this might be my last letter for a while, I’m not sure I’ll be able to send anything for sometime once I leave. _

_ I managed to find a place here that sells and makes stable stones of farspeech that are customisable and I’ve included one for you (it’s pink! Like those crystals you keep on your desk,) so that with luck we’ll be able to talk through them until I’m able to return home. Do you remember Cam? He’s still with me and will be travelling with me to Wonderland for the relic. He’s an interesting fellow, I just hope we can trust him. _

_ I’ve also included some Neverwinter taffy for Lucas, please let him know I’m thinking of him. If everything goes to plan, I’ll be home soon and we can really get started. _

_ I love you, Maureen. _

_ Yours always, _

_ Lucretia _

 

It takes a second for it to sink in and he blinks, trying to think. Lucretia, Lucretia, he knows the name but he can’t quite- oh shit. Oh boy. Oh he probably shouldn’t have read this.

“Whoops, whoopsie-daisy, overstepped a little there, my dude,” he mumbles to himself, fumbling to clumsily put the letter back in its envelope and shoving them all back in the drawer. Yeesh, he’d wanted a clue not a look into his boss’ private life. The letters looked pretty old though, he can’t help but wonder how long ago they were written. No, no, he shouldn’t. He should go back to looking at the crystals or something...but he didn’t close the drawer properly.

He groans, half convincing himself that it’s fine and pulls out the letter that looks the newest.

“Whatcha got there?”

The voice snaps him out of his momentary trance and he jumps, squawking and fumbling with the letter in his hands.

“Merle what the fuck, warn me!” He snaps up straight, burying the letter between his hands. Merle just laughs a deep, barking guffaw and takes a seat on the bed.

“So? What is it?” He says, resting his chin on his palm and leaning forward, waiting.

“Ugh,” Taako rolls his eyes, he really shouldn’t have read these letters at all. “They’re letters.”

“Have you been readin’ ‘em?” He raises an eyebrow.

“I mean,” Taako scratches behind his ear, knocking the rose gold (genuine, duh) hoop hanging from it to the side, “yeah, a little.”

“And?” Merle prompts him further.

“And maybe I shouldn’t have? Like, it’s pretty rude even by my standards.”

“Pfft, right, your sky-high snooping standards. What’d they say?”

“Y’know I’m not really sure that’s info I should be sharing,” he says, backing away slightly and holding the letter words-down to his chest.

“But y’still just read the damn things,” Merle huffs and Taako groans, throwing his arms up - keeping the letter still firmly grasped in one hand. He’d got him there.

“Look, I didn’t come here to be judged by-”

“God.”

“God has nothing to do with this! I’m not gonna be judged by an old man who fucks plants!”

“Alright, alright,” Merle half laughs, half scoffs, sighs and leans back, apparently not too bothered after all.  _ Typical, _ Taako thinks as he squints at him, putting the letter back into its envelope properly.

“They’re from the Director,” he says putting it back into the drawer and sliding it shut. “To someone called Maureen.”

“You think she worked here?”

“I mean, yeah,” he lifts up the umbra staff and holds it out, “but I think she and the Director were, uh, y’know.” He swishes it in the air, making a little heart shape that he hopes isn’t too subtle for Merle to latch onto.

“Oh?” Merle looks between him, the umbra staff and the drawer.  _ “Ohh!  _ Oh, man,” he laughs, realisation dawning on his face.

“Yeah.”

“Oh boy, we should probably go then, huh?”

“Probably but-”

“But you wanna look through all of this mystery woman’s shit first?”

“Ugh,” Taako spins around in the chair, facing further into the room, if nothing else Merle was good at stating the obvious in the least tactful way possible. “I guess.” He drawls, as if her wardrobe wasn’t calling to him.

Merle chuckles and gestures for him to go ahead. Like he never even cared in the first place, utterly typical. Still, though, with a huff he gets up and makes his way to it. It’s dusty. Of course it is, the entire room is dusty. Taako briefly thinks about what the difference between regular earth dust and space dust is - _ is the difference just where they happen to be? Or is the there more to space dust than regular ass earth dust? _

His thoughts get cut short when he opens the wardrobe and sees the clothes inside. They’re not particularly flashy - though looking at the room he’s in he’s not surprised, if slightly disappointed - but they’re elegant. Pretty, even. Suits, blazers, dress shirts and slacks, the occasional long skirt or dress. More than anything though, there are scarves. Like a metric fuckton of scarves. 

They’re all silky, soft and more often than not intricately patterned. Swirls of silver and purple dance on a deep royal purple that sits around the neck of a black blazer and white button-up shirt. Floral patterns dot whites, blacks and pinks and light-creamsicle oranges. Some of them even look positively  _ festive, _ a wine red satin patterned with velvet swirls and what Taako thinks might be glitter, another is a dark silk with a forest green sheen that’s been twisted at some point - it’s the only one with lingering creases. Taako thinks that’s just as well, the abyssal green isn’t his favourite colour. He could spend all day looking at the various scarves in here, there’s just so many! Finally though, his eyes land on a pile of three scarves neatly folded on a shelf. From top to bottom, lavender, pink and black.

Merle tuts at him as he takes them out one by one, unfolds and holds them out in front of him. He decides, first, that lavender isn’t currently his colour - it might be tomorrow, but right now? Nah. Not in this lighting. He throws it at Merle and listens to him guffaw as he pulls it off his face.

“Are you seriously trying on all her clothes?”

“Not all of them.” He scoffs, to his dismay most of her skirts look too small for him. He not so delicately reaches for the pink scarf. It’s a lot heavier than you’d imagine a scarf to be, so much so in fact that as he’s pulling it out he tumbles and gets hit in the chest by whatever decided the scarf shelf was a good place to call home.

The scarf unravels, finding itself draped over Taako’s face, and a large, rectangular item falls to the ground with a thud.

Pulling the scarf away from his eyes - though he’ll admit it’s soft lavender smell was actually pretty nice - he bends down and picks it up.

“Whatcha got?”

“A book, I guess?” He drops it onto the bed beside Merle, who’s apparently been folding the scarves that Taako had decided didn’t suit him. They’re all in a slightly uneven pile on the other side of him, one still half folded in his hands. Taako’s not sure if he’s more surprised that Merle knows how to fold clothing or that he hasn’t gotten soil all over them.

“Too big to just be a regular old book,” Merle says, as if he’s seen a hundred of them before, running a hand over the cover and pulling it onto his lap. “I bet you 10 gold this is a photo album.”

“Like, family photos?” Looking at the thing Taako had figured it’d be a spellbook or some kind of boring tome, not a photo album.

“What other kinds of photos do you put in an album?” Merle scoffs, patting the comforter next to him for Taako to sit, so he does, shrugging. Photo albums had never really been on his mind, he guessed.

Merle flips the book open to a random page and, lo and behold, it  _ was _ a photo album. A collection of photos of a woman Taako didn’t recognise and a baby littered the pages with tiny captions under them in red ink.

_ Baby’s first Candlenights! _

A photo of a baby looking dumbfounded by a Candlenights bush, wrapping paper and ribbons strewn all around.

_ Lucas learns what a watch is - then drools all over mine. _

“Oh my  _ god,” _ Taako says, clasping a hand over his mouth, “we’re seriously looking through this jerk’s baby photos? We’re really doing that?”

Merle doesn’t give him an answer, chuckling along with him.

_ New socks!!  _

A picture of a baby Lucas in a pair of yellow flower printed socks, by this point he’s grown well into dislike for the camera, pouting at it with a level of disdain that Merle thinks is hilarious.

“Look at the sourpuss on this kid,” he laughs, turning the page, “y’think he still glares like that?”

“Ugh,” Taako waves a hand at him, “he’s probably better at it, at least.”

The next page, however, stops them in their tracks. Lucas is older now, and the woman is joined by someone familiar. She’s younger than who they assume is Lucas’ mother, though not by a huge margin, and looks just like the Director might’ve done thirty or so years ago.

“How  _ old _ are these?” Taako says particularly tactlessly, not that it matters much around Merle.

“Uhh, let’s see,” Merle looks hard at a picture of Lucas, who must’ve been at least six, his mother and the other woman for a date. “That can’t be right,” he mutters, flicking further into the album.

He stops, noticing a face he knows all too well. No doubt about it. The other woman is the Director. Her hair is whiter than it’s ever been on the print, the way her crows feet deepen when she smiles is perfectly captured as she’s pulled into a warm embrace by the woman, it's then it clicks that this woman _must_ be Maureen and her smile is just as big and bright as the Director’s. They’re too close to the camera to really get an idea of where they are, but what they can tell is that they’re happy.

Taako and Merle share a look. Everything shakes, the crystals on the desk rattle and tumble to the floor, clattering as they go. The photo album slips out of Merle’s grip and falls from his lap. Everything is white.

_ Lucretia’s here to stay! _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading as always! next one might take a bit, i've got writers block and i'm juggling 2 (soon to be 3) dnd groups but!! i'm doing my best and it'll come out as soon as it can!

**Author's Note:**

> well there it is! i hope you enjoyed this first chapter, if you know me you've seen what else i have ready for this so please don't spoil it!  
> a big, big thank you to [jordan](https://twitter.com/burnhounds) for working on this AU with me and [cecil](https://twitter.com/Schgain) for helping me come up with the title!  
> if you have any comments or questions please hit me up on [twitter](https://twitter.com/umbrastaff) or [tumblr](https://umbrastaffs.tumblr.com/) !!  
> thank you for reading!


End file.
